Were Not Our Hearts Burning?: Walking the Emmaus Road With Christ
"And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he interpreted to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning himself...They said to each other, 'Did not our hearts burn within us while he talked to us on the road, while he opened to us the Scriptures?'" — Luke 24:27, 32 (ESV)
Like being dropped into a movie halfway, sometimes it takes a bit of time to reorient ourselves. For us as 21st-century disciples of Christ, we need to realize that we too have been “dropped” into a story that has been going on since the foundations of the world.
Perhaps you have heard of the general features of the story arc:
Exposition: setting up the story—location, time, introducing the characters to orient us.
Conflict: the driving force in a story that the protagonist faces against an antagonist. This opens a question that we want answered.
Rising action: the progression of events the protagonist goes through—joys and sorrows, ups and downs—as they seek to resolve the conflict. As the story progresses, the stakes rise.
Climax: the high point that answers the question opened by the conflict.
Resolution: what happens after the conflict is resolved. It can end better (tragedy) or worse (comedy), but the ends are mostly tied up one way or another.
The Bible, with its 66 books, follows this trajectory as well. The stakes are high: sin threatens to separate humanity from God forever. Finally, at the climax point, God himself in the form of Jesus, the Son, steps into this mess personally and in an act of supreme injustice, is killed.
If we view the Bible with this story arc, we can then place ourselves, along with the two disciples walking on that dusty Emmaus road away from Jerusalem, in the “resolution” part of the story. We are living in days between the already and not yet. The ultimate Resolution is yet to come, described in the book of Revelation, we see that all wrongs will be made right, evil will be forever banished, and God will once again be reunited with his people in a world, as Nancy Guthrie says, that is “even better than Eden.”
And this impacts everything about how we live out our stories in the meantime.
A Slowly Rising Dawn
As with all good stories, we don’t jump from conflict to climax in two paragraphs. What would be the fun in that? No, what makes a story good is the slow unwinding of the process, the development. Each chapter adds more clues and hints to its resolution.
Likewise, in Scripture, God does not reveal everything immediately. We get the first shadowy promise in Genesis 3:15: The seed of the woman will crush your head.
Then in Exodus, we discover that he will come as a sacrificial lamb. His blood will protect those who shelter in it.
In Leviticus, the portrait’s initial sketches are filled out a bit more. We learned through the sacrificial system of ever more dimensions of the state of affairs with God and how He will repair it.
We also learned through the sheer repetition that this system is not Him yet. Someone better is still coming—someone who will be that perfect and unblemished sacrifice that will bear the full weight and condemnation of sin once and for all.
Ruth revealed that this person is going to be a kinsman, one of us close enough to redeem. He would choose to pay the full price to bring His bride home. He will redeem even the outsider and foreigner and welcome her in.
Second Samuel gave the portrait a throne. The One who was coming would be a King and His kingdom would have no end. His covenant with David ensured that this will happen, even if every other king failed.
Through the Psalms we begin to hear His voice. Though David might have been singing his own prayers of lament and praise, we discover that through the inspiration of the Spirit, David had also been writing about Someone whose suffering would surpass his own.
Ecclesiastes helps us see who is needed by highlighting the void that needed filling. We need Someone who will satisfy and give hope in ways that surpass what the world offers. Every unanswered question was a question-shaped space waiting for one answer.
As the action continues to rise in God’s story, we get clearer and clearer portraits through the prophets.
Isaiah gave us the clearest face yet: a holy King on the throne who would suffer for our transgressions and then return in victory as the coming Conqueror to finish what the Suffering Servant began. The promised seed of the woman would be both the King and the sacrifice.
In Jonah God adds definition by adding contrast, showing us what the coming One would not be. Instead of running away He would set his face towards the lost. Instead of resenting God’s mercy He would die to give it.
By using Hosea’s marriage to a known prostitute, he deepened the contours of his portrait. He would be a husband who would not let go of his unfaithful bride. He had every right to demand his rights but he doesn’t, willingly paying the price of her redemption, at the cost of his life.
Finally, in Malachi, right before the climax point of highest tension and darkest hope we get the glimmer of the Sun of righteousness who will rise with healing in his wings. As the refiner’s fire he will purify hearts once cold and darkened by sin.
The portrait is now complete, but the Person is not yet present.
And in the silence, we wait.
The Pinnacle of the Son
Until a baby cried in Bethlehem. Though most people did not realize it here He is;
The seed of the woman.
The Lamb of God.
The Kinsman-Redeemer.
The Son of David.
He is
The One the Psalms were singing about. The answer to every question Ecclesiastes could not answer.
The holy King, the suffering Servant, the coming Conqueror.
The one runs toward, not away.
The husband who came back.
The refiner, the sun of righteousness, the first light breaking after the long silence.
With the rising action, God writes his story the way dawn arrives. Page by page, book by book, until the shadow becomes flesh, his glory fully revealed in the person of Christ.
More Yet to Come
But the story isn’t over yet. Nancy Guthrie captures what this means for what is still to come:
"The promise will have been fulfilled as the Promised One will have come to stay. The Lamb of God will have taken away the sin of the world. The Son of David will be seated on David's throne. The Wisdom of God will have overcome the foolishness of the world. The Word of the Lord who came will come again. This time, instead of coming to die for us, he will come to live with us. The curtain will open to a grand new story in which every scene will be better than the one before."
Though these past twelve posts are just a sampling of the Old Testament, my prayer is that you also have marveled at how God has revealed His plan to us, little by little. Like the early disciples, it is easy to miss it.
But now, at the end, I hope you also are beginning to recognize the signs and signals God has been building all along. Are you recognizing Him? More importantly, does your heart burn within you too?
And as you see yourself in the story, what will you do today?
Remember: the road to Emmaus does not end in disappointment. The disciples’ burning hearts lead to running feet, and a story that could not be kept to themselves.
Let’s enter the Story by telling the Story.
